“It is!” cried Maartje Pool and gave a little bounce that imperilled the lamp. “No!” The two on their knees sat smiling at each other, wide-eyed, like schoolgirls. The pigtails, emboldened, had come tap-tapping nearer and were peering over the shoulders of the women before the chest. “Here—wait.” Maartje Pool thrust the lamp into Selina’s hand, raised the lid of the chest, dived expertly into its depths amidst a great rustling of old newspapers and emerged red-faced with a Dutch basque and voluminous skirt of silk; an age-yellow cap whose wings, stiff with embroidery, stood out grandly on either side; a pair of wooden shoes, stained terra-cotta like the sails of the Vollendam fishing boats, and carved from toe to heel in a delicate and intricate pattern. A bridal gown, a bridal cap, bridal shoes. “Well!” said Selina, with the feeling of a little girl in a rich attic on a rainy day. She clasped her hands. “May I dress up in it some time?” Maartje Pool, folding the garments hastily, looked shocked and horrified. “Never must anybody dress up in a bride’s dress only to get married. It brings bad luck.” Then, as Selina stroked the stiff silken folds of the skirt with a slim and caressing forefinger: “So you get married to a High Prairie Dutchman I let you wear it.” At this absurdity they both laughed again. Selina thought that this school-teaching venture was starting out very well. She would have _such_ things to tell her father—then she remembered. She shivered a little as she stood up now. She raised her arms to take off her hat, feeling suddenly tired, cold, strange in this house with this farm woman, and the two staring little girls, and the great red-faced man. There surged over her a great wave of longing for her father—for the gay little dinners, for the theatre treats, for his humorous philosophical drawl, for the Chicago streets, and the ugly Chicago houses; for Julie; for Miss Fister’s school; for anything and any one that was accustomed, known, and therefore dear. Even Aunt Abbie and Aunt Sarah had a not unlovely aspect, viewed from this chill farmhouse bedroom that had suddenly become her home. She had a horrible premonition that she was going to cry, began to blink very fast, turned a little blindly in the dim light and caught sight of the room’s third arresting object. A blue-black cylinder of tin sheeting, like a stove and yet unlike. It was polished like the length of pipe in the sitting room below. Indeed, it was evidently a giant flower of this stem. “What’s that?” demanded Selina, pointing. Maartje Pool, depositing the lamp on the little wash-stand preparatory to leaving, smiled pridefully. “Drum.” “Drum?”